"At Syene, on the day of the solstice, a vertical rod casts no shadow at noon." – Eratosthenes, as reported by Cleomedes
FIELD REPORT – Bureau of Impossible Geography SURVEYOR: Ferdinand Lusk, Photometric Surveyor, Second Grade SHARD: THE LEDGER OF SHADOWS (city of Gnomon) REPORT 1 OF 14 STATUS: Arrived at noon; unmeasured I came up the last mile of the road on foot, because the carter would not take his mule onto the plateau after eleven, and I was on the flagstones at the foot of the Border Lamp when the bell rang. I had been told about the bell. I had not been told what it would be like. It is one stroke, from a tower you can see from the road, a blade of ochre stone standing up out of the middle of the city. At the stroke the man at the post, who had been walking towards me with a chain in his hand, stopped where he was. Everyone stopped. A woman with a basket on the road behind me stopped with one foot lifted and put it down very carefully beside the other. And my shadow, which had been walking ahead of me all the way up the hill, went in under my boots like water going into sand. The Bureau's fi...
From the lore of The Ledger of Shadows.